


Careless Talk Costs Lives

by redletters



Category: Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - British, British, Codes & Ciphers, F/M, Gen, Making Out, Swing Dancing, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redletters/pseuds/redletters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Devon, 1939. As war with Germany looms, British victory may be in the hands of a small group of radio interceptors and codebreakers at Messina House. Specifically, of two young mathematicians - impoverished aristocrat Stella Beattie and Oxford crossword champion Ben Padova - that is, if they can stop flirting over the intercepts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [water_bby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/water_bby/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! :) Many thanks to my betas C and S: C for historical bits and tone, and S for helping the code actually make sense! (I'm sure it still doesn't, but that's all absolutely my fault now.)

_LEON_

_As you can guess from present circs I must come stay with you STOP_

_Arriving Thursday early evening bags to follow  
_

_BEATTIE_

 

"Typical Alun," Lord Leon said crossly when the telegraph arrived.

His daughter Hero looked up from her correspondence. "What's typical and who's Alun?"

"Ambassador Alun Beattie, OBE," Leon said, swirling the syllables in his mouth, "formerly of Paris, Vienna and anywhere else glittering and facile you might care to name. Most formerly of Berlin, so you can guess the turn his diplomatic career has taken of late." Hero was looking at him with fond exasperation. "More relevant to us, he was Mary's husband – my brother-in-law. You wouldn't have met him."

She turned back to her writing. "Why do you think he's coming here?"

"Well, presumably flush with disgrace from his utter failure to stop, preclude or even mitigate the disastrous situation unfolding on the Continent, he's coming back to Britain to hide his head - and drink the last of my 1926 Bordeaux," he finished petulantly. Since the U-Boats in the Channel had encouraged wine shipments from France to taper off, their wine cellar had been slowly depleting. Last week they'd been forced to pair Chablis with fish.

"I'll have Ursule make up the last spare room," Hero said.

"Selfish," murmured Leon, "selfish".

But what arrived with a knock on the door at half six the next day was not a failed diplomat but a square-shouldered sharp-chinned girl in her mid-twenties, of medium height, medium good looks and otherwise medium everything, with wet and frizzing red hair and very bright lipstick.

"Uncle!" Stella Beattie said, dropping her hand suitcase on the marble floor. "It's raining like Hades out there."

"My girl!" Leon said. "My goodness – Stella – come in, come in." The man appeared. Stella handed her bag to him and peered up at the noveau chandelier, and the portrait of a young girl in a white dress over the staircase.

"I'm so terribly sorry, I was expecting your father," Leon said. "Late, I suppose – typical Alun-"

"Oh – I'm so terribly sorry, Uncle, I thought you knew," Stella said, "Father passed last week." She flushed and began to speak more quickly. "I sent a telegram. I'm so,  _so_ sorry to impose on you like this but I really haven't anywhere else to stay, I've just found out he sold the house in Ayrshire – "

"Well, goodness, of course you can stay!" Leon said. "I'm – I'm terribly sorry you're not better provided for, that's all. Would you like to join us for sherry?"

"Yes please," she said eagerly.

***

The maid Ursule showed Stella to a small room under the eaves, with pink walls and a folded-up crib in the corner. Once alone, Stella set up a photograph of her father on the small child's bedstand. It felt like the correct thing to do. She wasn't sure how she felt. Father hadn't been himself in the past year; he'd been slow, and weary, and stopped speaking to her unless she asked him a question. All their friends in the Foreign Office had slowly stopped calling, and Stella had felt very alone for months. This was simply a new variation, and one with more actual company.

Her bag had leaked, it seemed, as her green dress had been hung up to dry and had a wet splotch on the shoulder and front. Her only other frock was a black tea dress which there hadn't been time to press; Stella pulled off her travelling clothes and put it on, trying to smooth out the wrinkles. She looked at herself in the mirror and pulled a face: her lipstick had worn off. She reapplied and blotted it. "Fnah fnah," she said, mouthing upper-class syllables to herself, and went downstairs.

***

A young woman greeted her at the foot of the stairs, the older version of the girl in the portrait, now in a coral silk dress with her dark hair pulled into a soft twist at her neck. Stella ran a quick hand over her own hair – without a comb there had been no use taking it out of her travelling plait.

"I can't believe it, a cousin I've never met!" Hero said. "I'm so sorry you're stuck in the nursery – we're just full up at the moment, as you'll see."

"Stella Beattie," she said, sticking her hand out; she was surprised when Hero pulled her in for a hug. Hero led her to the sitting room, where the men were at their apertifs.

Stella recognised every man but one – a handsome man with dark gold hair, sitting in a red leather armchair by the window and smoking a cigarillo much more glumly than anyone with a glass of fino in his left hand had any right to do.

Her uncle Antony stood up to greet her and kissed her on the cheek. In the tall armchair at the head of the room was a blue-eyed man she recognised from Embassy parties.   

"Lord Peter!" she said, holding out her hand and smiling. "How is the flower of English nobility?"

"He's Lord Admiral Donne now," Leon said proudly.

Peter smiled. "Miss Beattie, a pleasure as always." He kissed her hand with bloodless gallantry. "My brother, Lord John –" Stella curtsied briefly, and the dark-gold man looked pleased but did not smile.  

"The Donnes are here on a sort of – private reconnaissance," Leon said.

"Hmm," Stella said, flicking a glance at Hero. "Is there any sherry left or shall I just start on the gin?"

***

At dinner Stella was sat at the foot of the table and flashed a wry eyebrow to Lord John, across from her, who did not respond. The food was roast goose and potatoes, crisp and rich.

"The wine's the last Bordeaux '26 in the cellar," Leon said regretfully, "but for such outstanding company, only the best."

"Tell me all about your visit, Peter, I'm absolutely gagging to know," Stella said. The men exchanged looks.

"It's a bit national security," Peter said, and Stella looked down at her hands. Of course it was, and she was no longer privy to hearing Father's biting thoughts on everything. "I can tell you about a run-in I had with an idiot fascist while hunting the other week."

"You have to admire Hitler's leadership," Lord John said. All eyes turned to him. "Not, of course, his politics. But to have the loyalty and admiration of so many..."

"I'm sure he's the most popular man in Britain," Stella said. "Who else has so many great people speaking of him over dinner?"

"Lord Admiral Donne is the most popular man in Britain," Lord Leon said.

"Yes, and he's talking of Herr Hitler," Stella said brightly. The table laughed, Lord Donne most of all. He raised his glass to her, and she met his eyes: warm, thoughtful and polite. 

Leon sipped his wine and turned to his brother. "Antony, how is your research going?"

"I'm obviously hoping to get a look at the wireless when the weather clears up," he said.

"Antony is something of a genius," Hero explained down the table, "and the house was used for-"

"Important things," Leon said.

"-during the last war."

"Ah," Stella said, very confused.

"Mostly it was set up as a hospital," Antony said. "They'd fly in troops from northern France, we were one of the closest, I believe. I'm just pleased the wireless has been maintained. The range must be marvellous!"

Leon's answers to his brother's' questions became shorter and shorter, but he never cut him off as Admiral Donne leaned in. "Do you mean we can still pick up wireless signals from across the Channel? Normandy, Brittany...?" he said.

"Should do," Antony said. "Certainly the Channel Islands, maybe even Maine and Anjou." There was a moment while this sunk in. "We could try right now if you like," he said.

***

Stella went to bed after dinner, exhausted, and Antony and Lord John retired soon after. Admiral Donne and Lord Leon sat in the study drinking port while Hero sat at the desk, carefully copying the accounts.

"Where's the Beattie girl been, then?" Donne said.

Leon reached for the cheese plate and looked at the translucent slices of Cheddar and Stilton wistfully, as if willing them into Brie and Camembert. "Traipsing around Europe with her father, who was surely one of the more annoying chaps in the Foreign Service," he said. He chose the Stilton. "I don't know why he didn't send her to school like a sensible man after Mary died. I can't imagine the girl got much of an education roaming the Continent all these years."

"On the contrary, I'd imagine she got quite the education," Donne said. He stood and offered the plate to Hero, who speared the last Cheddar. "She speak German, does she?"

"Very well, I think," Hero said. "She and Ursule were joking in it over the pudding." It was a rude joke that Hero hadn't quite caught. She'd wanted to ask but didn't want to embarrass herself; she was sure her sophisticated cousin already thought she was a hothouse country rose. She took a bite of the Cheddar, savoured the rich tang, and smoothed her fingers against her handkerchief.

"Italian?"

Leon frowned. "Her mother was an opera singer..."

Donne looked over at her. "French?"

"She went to the Sorbonne."

"Hmm," Donne said.

Hero flexed her hand and brushed pencil shavings off her skirt, and carried them over to the small bin at the end of the room.

"Now, to what we were talking about," Donne murmured. "Are you sure we can trust the servants?"

Leon looked out the door to where his valet and cook were flirting over the decanter. "Certainly," he said. "Ursule's parents are German pastors, you know, and Balthasar's family –" he dropped his voice and said: "Guernica."

Donne looked at him in surprise. "Well, aren't you a little home for Fascist refugees," he said.

"Our wine steward is an Italian trade unionist," Hero said with a straight face. Everything seemed to be coming together, if she understood it properly. 

***

Stella put on the green cotton dress, now dry, and came downstairs for breakfast. She found Hero resting her elbows on the table, reading the literary reviews. Stella put the kettle on for tea and dug the crossword out from below the news: GERMANY DEMANDS DANZIG, CORRIDOR.

"Guests are exciting," she said. "Are there usually people here?"

Hero wrinkled her nose. "In summer, yes," she said. "Uncle Antony usually stays with us except during term-time, but there's always a few people hanging around."

In the hall the phone rang, and they froze and listened.

"It's the Prime Minister, sir," Balthasar said to Peter. 

Peter listened, and spoke briefly, and his face became terrible. "Please have my car brought around," he said to Balthasar. "Quickly." Into the line he said, "Thank you for informing me, Sir – I'll be in Whitehall as soon as possible."

Stella knew what he was going to say before he walked into the kitchen, spread his hands and said, "We're at war, ladies."

But the room still suddenly emptied out of all noise and air, and Stella felt a curious familiar blankness swell around her. It was the same she had felt last week when Father passed, and both times she had been sure this was coming. Leon and Antony had come in behind Peter, and were both looking at her.

"Miss Beattie, I'm afraid we're going to press you into service here," Leon said. "Please do finish your tea."

"Outstanding!" she chirped.


	2. Chapter 2

Antony went to the study and returned with a file. "These are the codes we cracked during the Great War," he said. "I suspect the Germans are using something similar now – based on the same principles, I mean, but unfortunately almost certainly using a much more complex encoding machine. We're going to do it by hand."

"Sounds fun," Stella said. She pushed the crossword away and pulled the papers closer.

"It is," he said, giving her a conspiratorial glance, "but don't tell my brother you think so, he thinks I'm mad enough already. You'll get to read some terrifically interesting stuff if we can crack it. How's your Morse code?"

"Dreadful," she said.

"In that case I'll take intercept shifts until we can get some more hands on board. Donne should be sending us a dozen or so, and soon, I hope." The radio between them crackled and Antony slid the headphones over his ears quickly, grabbing a notepad in his other hand. He began taking notation and Stella watched as his pencil flew over the pad in a string of letters.

"We'll do this one together," he said when the transmission had finished. "It's a long one, that's good." He picked up a ruler and paper.

"These are the rules we know," he said. "Each letter pairs with another letter, you see: if E is T then T is E."  
  
"Well, that shouldn't take too long," Stella said, settling in.

"Quite. But it's a little more complicated than that: the machines I think they're using don't use the same code for every letter. The first letter is encoded with one, the second letter with another, and so on."

"That sounds impossible!" she said.

"Only nearly," Antony said, with a smug expression Stella found both comforting and exasperating. "Fortunately for us, it loops after a few letters. There will be a key for each message – possibly each day, although I wouldn't keep my fingers crossed for that – and if you find the length of the key, you'll know how many different codes there are and when to go back round the loop. Here's one from the Great War where the key is four letters – I like this one, ELSA – I think it must have been a girlfriend's name."

Stella looked down at it. "So, four different codes in order and then it goes back to the first one? Not too bad, but terribly boring."

"Yes."

"And they have machines doing this? Can't we just get one?"

Antony laughed. "If one falls off the back of a lorry, I'm sure we'll be the first to know. Until then, why don't you have a try by hand."

Stella pulled in her chair and got stuck in.

***

Antony moved the listening station upstairs to the ayrie and within a few days interceptors started to trickle in, in that mysterious way that people seem to arrive during wartime: all women, staying at the hostel just outside town and rotating shifts night and day listening for signals from France on Messina's enormous wireless. In the mornings Stella and Antony would sit at the kitchen table with slides, pencils and the intercepted messages. Over tea they'd work in silence until Ursule started preparing lunch around them, the daily signal to take a break and occasionally a walk before returning for the afternoon and, usually, into the evening.  

After a week of twelve-hour shifts Stella felt ready to crack, and after a not-quite-argument with his brother, Antony won permission to recruit one or two of his students to the operation to relieve the pressure. "No radicals," Leon warned, and Antony blinked. "Me?"

The next week a knock sounded at the door and Stella, halfway through a message about troop movements, didn’t answer it. A few moments later it sounded again. And again. She sighed and pushed back her chair, and went to open it.

A tall man with black curling hair was on the step – a boy, really, her age or a year or two younger. That he seemed very young despite his height was probably due to the poor fitting of his suit, which bagged tweedily around his thin shoulders but was two inches too short in the leg. His cycle clips were still attached to his trousers, and he carried a scuffed cloth briefcase.

"Ah, Benjamin," Antony said, coming up behind her.

"Is this him?" Stella said. "Come on in, we're breaking codes in the kitchen. Have you got a pencil?"

She showed him what she was working on and began to explain the methodology, until Ursule began to set out cold beef and parsnips and the staff on duty clustered around the table.

"Is that Ben!" Hero came into the room, smiling. "Ben Padova, isn't it?"

Ben looked up from the intercepts and jumped to his feet. "Miss – Leon, of course! Well, that makes sense. Ah, Lord Leon, Hero and I met at–"

"Decca's coming-out party," Hero said, coming forward to shake his hand in greeting.

Leon looked as surprised as Stella felt. "Really? Benjamin, I didn't realise, ah, your family was–"

"Oh, nobodies," Ben said, grinning. "Pa's the youngest son of a Rothschild cousin, I think I was only invited because Decca wanted to shock Unity and Di. Fantastic evening, though," he said to Hero, "especially after Debo dumped all that brandy in the punch."

Leon looked disconcerted; Hero was beaming warmly; and Stella felt real elation. _Thank goodness_ , she thought, _there's another me here._

Ben's speciality was puzzles, he proudly told them over a nip of post-prandial brandy, and he was Balliol's crossword champion for the second year running. "Which is something of what we're doing here," Leon said. "Stella's already got you started, has she?"

The message was a dull weather report, but it gave Ben the chance to watch the breaking process as Stella tried to fit the letters into either German or Italian words. "It _is_ like a crossword," Ben said, pleased. Once cracked she'd quickly translate it into English, then take the decrypted message to Leon, who would analyse it and pass it to High Command if necessary, and Hero, who would add it to a growing card catalogue of code names, dates and locations.

"As you can see, it's a fairly well-oiled machine but somewhat understaffed," Leon said. "The shifts have been ten hours, seven days a week – some boring, some tear-your-hair-out – and the pay is best not spoken of. Now, I'm afraid our last bedroom has been taken over by the catalogue cabinets, but I hope your billet will be suitable: you'll be sleeping above the Leg of Mutton in town. It's only about ten minutes' walk away."

Ben laughed. "More than suitable, thank you, sir."

He turned out to be a slow and steady worker, much more steady than Stella, who tended to flounder in the dark until a flash of insight illuminated the problem – which, happily, was often. Ben was also the first to identify the precise time the daily keywords tended to change, at around 10:55pm, saving them all several hours a day of unpicking the patterns of messages around that time.

After two weeks they were joined by Robert Conrad, another of Antony's Oxford protégés – and, as the volume of messages increased, another dozen women to staff the wireless intercept station. Soon Hero asked for help with her rapidly growing catalogue of decrypts, and was extremely pleased to receive the assistance of Margaret O'Leary, former head cashier at John Lewis Oxford Street, who instituted both an efficient punch-card filing system for the catalogue and a Saturday night social hour in the ballroom.

Stella had set herself the private challenge of breaking more codes a week than Ben or Rob, although Ben was the only real challenge: she beat him just over half the time. By the end of November, whichever of them 'lost' bought the other a pint at the Leg of Mutton the next time they were off shift together. Away from the academic silence of Messina, they were pleased to have the chance to talk about things other than work.

Indeed, they could hardly have done otherwise; aside from both taking the Official Secrets Act, the posters all around the pub, the town and the manor house of Messina itself all touted the deep patriotic virtue of secret-keeping: CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Which was how Stella found herself with her hands wrapped around a pint of Pride on a cold December night, telling Ben about her mother.

"She was an opera singer, mostly in Europe. I have a picture of her looking beautiful in Milan. I got Father's hair, unfortunately," she laughed. "I think it was quite a scandal when they married. Leon was so cross, he'd wanted her to marry one of his mates from uni, I heard."

"What was she like at home?" Ben said. There were several inches left in his glass of beer, and he was poised on the brink of another.

"I don't know," Stella said. "She died having me." Her glass was empty. Ben silently pushed his towards her, and she drank it, and as she drank it she began to laugh. "She gave me my very ridiculous name, too, so I can thank her for that whenever I need to smile." She stood up. "My round."

Over this one he told her about his parents and sister, who were staying in America with cousins.

"On holiday?" Stella asked.

"Something like that," Ben said dryly. "For some reason with names like Yitzhak, Rivka and Hannah they figured they'd get as far away from Europe as possible."

"Ah."

"I'm sorry for going on," he said abruptly, "I haven't really talked to anyone about – that."

"What, the grand halls of Balliol were not echoing with empathy," she said, raising an eyebrow.

Ben mirrored her expression and opened his mouth, looking about to say something sardonic, when the pub door opened. A half-dozen Navy men from the Messina shipyard walked in, bearing Hero in front of them like a standard.

"Stella!" she said, and waved. Ben made a small face but scooted closer to Stella to make room for the group, and looked up at the sailor handing Hero into the booth beside him. He blinked, then grinned widely and held out his hand.  

"That can't be Claude," he said.

"Is that Ben?" the man said. "Christ, haven't you got tall!"

"Not broad, sadly," Ben said, and they both laughed.

"Pint for Ben and his lovely friend," Claude said to the landlady, and rapped on the wooden bar. "What are you doing here, mate? Haven't seen you at drills, which ship are you with?"

"No such luck," Ben lied smoothly, "gammy leg."

Claude frowned but was distracted when their beer arrived, and Stella felt Ben relax beside her.

She walked home smiling with Hero, who had plucked a flower and was wearing it in her hair.

"Don't you think Claude's funny," Hero said cautiously when they were in bed.

Stella frowned. Funny amusing or funny odd? "He certainly wears that uniform well, I can say that," she said after a moment.

Hero made a pleased sound. "I thought so too," she said, and rustled under the covers.

Stella stared at the ceiling. She was trying to remember a particular pattern of vowels she'd picked out that morning, and fell asleep while visions of cryptographs danced in her head.

***

Two weeks before Christmas the house was cold and the depressive effect of rationing was beginning to be felt. One Saturday evening Stella suggested they do a Christmas revue. Margaret immediately volunteered, of course. Balthasar, who they all knew played piano, surprised no one with a luxurious rich voice as well. And Hero won a coup de theatre in persuading some of the naval men to come up from the shipyard for a chorale.

"What are you doing for it?" Stella asked Ben as he made tea one morning. "Sing? Act? Tap-dance?"

"I do a mean Widow Twankey," he offered, pouring it into Leon's china cups.

"Don't promise me something you're not willing to see through," she warned.

"Try me."

***

"Well," Stella said, loosening her bow tie as they came offstage, "I'm sure poor Mr Porter's music has suffered worse. Probably. Somewhere."

Ben, wearing Margaret's best approximation of a Madame DuBarry dress, whipped off his wig and began scratching the back of his neck frantically. "I will never underestimate Woman again now that I've experienced petticoats," he said, and made a quick exit towards the servants' rooms, where he'd left his proper clothes.  

Stella slipped upstairs to change back into her grey cotton dress, which was the smartest she owned by virtue of being least frayed. She was surprised and delighted to find Hero had laid out one of her own dresses on Stella's bed, a blue-green frock she'd often admired. It was a bit tight around the bust and arms but the silk satin felt luxurious; Stella slipped it on and spun around once before rolling on an old stick of rose-pink lipstick and unpinning her hair, fluffing out the curls before sweeping the top up and re-pinning it away from her face.

She returned to the ballroom just as Ben reappeared in his everyday suit, pressed for the occasion. Ursule and Balthasar had pushed the catalogues against the ballroom wall for the night, and Leon had produced a gramophone from somewhere mysterious and a Benny Goodman record from somewhere even more mysterious.

Ben held out his hand to her. "Rude not to," Stella said, and took it.

"You're a surprisingly competent dancer for how skinny you are," she said thoughtfully a few moments later.

He threw back his head and laughed. "Thanks - I think that's why Antony hired me, actually."

"I thought it was the way you looked in that frock," she said.

"Just watch this," he smiled back. She felt the shift in his posture and moved with him as he spun her around, taking up a small circle on the ballroom floor that widened as the intercept girls and sailors gave them room. After a few moments he slipped her back into a hold. "I never know what to do during drum solos," he admitted low in her ear, and she said conspiratorially, "Follow my lead." She'd learned to Charleston in Paris, and after a few bars he picked it up too: his long legs were sublimely ridiculous going through the wide steps. As the music ended he somehow swept her into a dip with one hand, and used the other to slick back his hair with an exaggerated gesture.

"That's an annoyingly wonderful move," Stella said as he righted her. "You'll have to teach it to me."

"I'm always happy to follow your lead," Ben said.

A slower tune started up and Leon, who had been making the rounds of the room, cut in. Ben bowed out and over her uncle's shoulder Stella saw him bypass several done-up girls to gallantly offer his hand to a shy interceptor who had been picking anxiously at the hem of her dress.

"Thanks for this," she said to her uncle, looking around at the smiling dancers around the room.

He gazed down at her. "My dear - it's Christmas."

Hero and Claude were dancing slow and close near the gramophone.

"What a time to meet a man, poor girl," Leon said.

"Hmm?"

"The division's called up – they ship out on New Year's."


	4. Chapter 4

_February_

Stella was sat in the kitchen staring at three intercepts, one on top of the other, when Ben finished his shift in the library. A mug of tea was chilling beside her right hand and she was very still.

"Bed, Beattie," Ben said casually as he passed the open door.        

"When I've figured out whatever it is bothering me about these," she said without looking up.

Ben came in and sat down across from her, and she pushed her tea over to him.

"There's just...These are all from the same operator – you know, that chap with the heavy backhand," Stella said.

Ben laughed. "Yes. I like him," he said. "He's got funny pauses. It makes me feel like I'm in a panto. You know, 'He's behind you!'."

"Hang on," Stella said. "Stop talking. Hold that." She was staring at the intercepts in front of her. "Go to the catalogue and get two or three of his decrypts, and don't you dare say anything until you've come back."

Ben held up his hands, joking, and walked as quietly as he could down the hall. He knew the Leons were asleep, but more importantly he didn't want to jostle her train of thought – he knew how delicate a breakthrough could be. He came back into the room with the first three he could find, and put them on the table.

Stella spread them in front of her, and said a very rude word.

"Now now, my lady," Ben said, and Stella didn't even respond, so he looked back at the decrypts.

_English moving 1,500 troops on three ships to Cairo Heil Hitler_

_Weather report: Channel foggy waters still Heil Hitler_

_Message of troop movement received Heil Hitler_

On the desk in front of Stella, each coded message had the same pattern of ten letters at the end.

"Oh," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"Every time," Ben said in wonder. "Every message of his – we've got ten letters already."

"The patriotic little shit," Stella said.

She ran to wake Antony, who woke Leon, and they clustered over the pages.

"This is tremendous," Leon said. "Really tremendous."

"Of course, it won't work for all of them," Stella said, "but maybe others will be as lazy about something like that. In the morning we can crack on with the intercepts in the catalogue we haven't decrypted yet – Ben or I can tell you about the operators. We all know which is which. If they each have their little quirks, it will be so much easier-"

"He's handed it to us, really," Ben said.

Leon shook both of their hands. "Miss Beattie, according to protocol you _really_ should have been asleep an hour ago, but I'm so delighted you weren't."

Conrad knocked on the door to begin his own shift and Stella handed him the intercepts, proudly explaining their discovery. "Good night," she said, and left the kitchen with Ben, who was beaming with the same expression she felt sure she must have herself.

In the foyer Ben stuck his hands in his pockets and took a step to and fro. He looked like he was making a decision, and said: "I'm too excited to go to bed. Pint or walk?"

"Walk," Stella said quickly.

"I'll get my coat."

It was a cold clear night, after midnight. Stella stepped out onto the porch and breathed in the cold air: what would she say if anyone asked her what she was doing going out? Footsteps padded on the path and Hero walked by, looking very far away. Stella knew she should greet her cousin or let her know she was there, but instead leaned back behind a column, covered in creeping ivy. The light from the kitchen illuminated Hero's gold earrings and pearls, and Stella raised a hand to her own bare throat. She was thankful it was dark.

She heard Ben greet Hero cordially as her cousin went into the house, and Stella burst out from behind the pillar a little too energetically. Ben looked at her curiously and she saw the moon in his eyes. "How about up over the lake?" she suggested.

The path to the lake was worn with the feet of anxious walkers treading the path up and back. Ben pushed through the foliage to find the small path winding up the hill, and Stella followed him. The way was not steep, but occasionally rocky, and Stella's shoes scrabbled against the sharp stones under her feet. She hadn't owned proper country shoes since she was a child, and boots were scarce now, while her old French leather pumps were not so sturdy. After several minutes of listening to Ben breathe in the dark ahead of her, they emerged at one of her favourite spots: the hill looking over the lake at the house.

From here they could see Messina, the ballroom and kitchen lit up like a grand house before the war, and the lights glittering on the black lake below them. The air was cold and fresh. Stella pulled her cardigan around her; moments later she felt warm quilted down on her back, as Ben settled his own jacket around her shoulders. It smelled like him.

He sat beside her and looked out, then back at her with a cheeky grin that she could only barely make out in the dark: she knew it by the familiar sound of him smiling more than anything else. He pulled a bottle from his pocket. "Whisky?"

"Ben!" Stella exclaimed, mock-scandalised. "Glenfidditch?"

He wrinkled his nose. "Nothing so fine, I'm afraid - whatever passes for it in the Leg of Mutton. The landlady is so generous with food I've got nothing to spend my wages on but drink -"

"And Burma shave," Stella said, smoothing the jacket down and raising an eyebrow.

"The finer things in life," Ben amended. He unscrewed the cap of the bottle, swirled a mouthful and made a face, and seeing Stella watching him sceptically, pretended to be savouring it. "A fine palate off the top of the nose, good legs and a warming texture," he said.

Stella couldn't help laughing as she took the bottle. "None of that makes any sense at all," she said. "Oh heavens, this is dreadful stuff." He shifted and his leg brushed hers. "Pretend it's Glenanythingyoulike," he said.

" _Heil Hitler_ ", she murmured under her breath, toasting south-west towards the German operator across the Channel. Ben laughed richly beside her, and reclined on the frosty grass with his hands behind his head.

"We are geniuses," he said.

Stella leaned on her side, looking at him and the view. She fantasised she could see the lights of Normandy far, far across the water. She took another sip of whisky and coughed. "This is really bloody awful," she said. Ben made a wounded _moue_. "Bet it's the best you've had in a year," he said.

"A year!" Stella said. She lay back too, and looked up at the stars, bright and clear. Below her Messina flickered into the nightly blackout. "Best in a year would have been...the end of the Bordeaux with Peter – Admiral Donne," she said. "Before that it was really dreadful claret on the train, and... champagne at the German embassy in London, I suppose. That was an awful party," she said. Ben was silent beside her. "It was so obvious there was going to be war and Father had just been recalled home; he was hardly speaking to anyone, so I was stuck making conversation with all of these terrible men. Do you know," she continued, though she never would have said this in other circumstances, "it's the Brits who were worst to me – I don't know if that's because of Mother's terrible scandal of marrying Father, I must be so embarrassing to them–"

"You're not embarrassing," Ben said reflexively.

Stella laughed. "Oh, I am, you haven't seen me properly."

"I have seen you," he said. "You're not embarrassing. What's embarrassing is standing around making chitty-chatty small talk with – with people like that. It's them who should have been embarrassed – I hope they were."

Ben put his hand out, and she thought for the whisky so held it out to him, but he pushed himself up on his elbow and looked at her, his curling hair falling in his eyes. Stella wanted to reach her hand up and push it back behind his ear.

"You're the cleverest person I know," he said. "This bloody country and all the people in it...maybe I should have left with my parents."

"No," Stella said.

They looked at each other for a long moment, and he looked down and did take the whisky. Stella breathed out very slowly.

"I do wonder how the Krauts can't have figured out that we're onto them," he said. "Then I remember how many hours I've taken on one single line of a useless weather report and think – surely nobody can be this mad."

"What are you going to do when the war's over?" she said. His fingers were still over hers on the bottle. He lifted it, and his hand slipped away. He took a long drink.

"Go back and get my doctorate, maybe," he said. "I'd like to travel – I've really always wanted to. My parents were always too worried to let me go to the continent, which was...smart. But when things are safe, yeah, I'd like to go to Cairo and Singapore and not even British places: Marrakech, Buenos Aires, Cape Town..."

"That sounds wonderful," Stella said. "Travelling is - well. People said it wasn't right for Father to take me along but I had the most marvellous time."

"What about you?"

She laughed. "I, I don't know. It depends on my uncle. I really haven't got any money of my own."

"Surely not," Ben said a little bitterly.

"Surely yes," she said. "Father tried so hard keep up appearances but, you know, a diplomat's salary is not so good – why do you think there are so many rich ambassadors?"

He exhaled rudely. "For the same reason there are so many rich people everywhere?"

"Point. But no, nobody can actually live on what they give you – and certainly not live on it and provide for their daughter. Oh, I don't know, I expect Uncle will find some dull good-looking lord with an income to marry me off to – not so good-looking nor with such an income as the one he finds for Hero, of course: a second-rate husband for the second-rate cousin–"

"Stop," Ben said. He sounded angry. "Really, stop talking." He put his hand below her chin and Stella felt her pulse jumping against his fingers. "You are not second-rate," he said. "To anyone."

Below them the lights were gleaming on the lake. The night was very still, except for a quiet wind blowing towards them. Stella closed her eyes – and opened them. Lights on the lake? "Messina's blacked out," she said. Ben frowned, then his eyes widened and they looked over the lake to the south to see small pilot lights coming towards them.

"Oh fuck," Ben said, "Bombers. Fuck."

Stella stood up and pulled him to his feet, and he put his hand on her shoulder only barely to steady himself. She slipped the whisky into her pocket and took his hand, and they began to run down the hill.

They stopped as the plane swung over the lake and landed on the water. Ben's hand was cold as it gripped hers tightly, and they darted down the path. She felt the smooth sole of her shoe slip on the scrabbling rocks just in time to call out, "Oh!" but not in time to catch herself. Ben turned and grabbed her arm as her left leg shot out from under her. Her full bodyweight came down on her awkwardly placed right ankle, sending pain shooting up from her foot. "You all right?" he said.

"Sorry, sorry," she breathed. "You go on and warn them, I'll get on in a bit."

"Nope," Ben said quickly. "Tell me if this hurts," and he picked her up, hefted her carefully over his shoulder and kept making his way - somehow, it felt, just as quickly - down the branchy path. 

The view, she had to confess, wasn't bad.

By the time they returned to the wide dirt road her foot felt all right, but she didn't say anything. _In case it turns out it hurts to walk_ , she told herself.

"I think I'm fine now," she said as they approached the house; she was very conscious of what they must look like, and as he set her down she tested her foot (a bit ginger but otherwise fine), and quietly slipped Ben's jacket off her shoulders and back into his hand.

Ben rapped on the servants' door, which quickly creaked open and Ursule pulled Stella and Ben inside. Antony, Leon and Hero were sitting around the kitchen table, Hero with bright eyes, and a very young man Stella didn't know in an RAF uniform stood at rigid attention behind them. A waterproof bag sat on the table. Leon looked over Stella – torn stockings, scuffed shoes, sweating - and Ben - jacket off, unshaven - and said nothing.

"Tremendous work from you, I hear," Hero said quietly.

"Not so tremendous after all," Ben said. "If we'd gone to work right away, maybe-"

"Well, not compared to Claude's crew," Hero said.

Stella raised her eyebrows. "Oh?" Ben said coldly.

Hero reverently unfolded the waterproof, and pulled apart the drawstring of the cloth bag within. Inside were gears and rotors.

"Oh," Stella said. " _Oh_."

It was a German cryptograph machine.


	5. Chapter 5

_June_

Stella was covering the wireless when rapid, jerky signals came across – she could barely write them down as fast as they came in. She moved the dial to find a new signal and heard a man shrieking in German, damning the Fuhrer before suddenly cutting out. She shuddered and moved on to the next frequency – more frantic code. "Jesus," she muttered. "Ben!" she called. "Rob!" There wasn't time to explain – she gestured to the spare headset and Rob took it up.

Ben stuck his head up. "Don't bother running them through the machine," he said, "the Krauts are, as they say, _die fucked_."

"Oh, ssh!" Stella said, annoyed.

Ben pulled open a windowshade and Stella saw the flashes of brightness outside the window as a team of Spitfires demolished the German planes; below, at the shipyard, battleship cannons boomed and U-boat crews paddled desperately to shore.

"Gosh," Rob said.

"Gosh indeed," Stella said, watching the view and jotting down code without fully thinking about it.

***

"It's happened!" Hero ran into the bedroom at ten o'clock the next morning; Stella, who had been on the late shift the previous night, pulled the duvet over her head and grumbled at her cousin. "Oh, wake up, you can sleep all you like tomorrow. The war's over!"

Stella felt a familiar strange cold creep over her. "I'm going to be sick," she announced, and promptly rolled on her side and dry-heaved onto the floor.

She came downstairs in a fuzzy haze to learn it was all true, and Admiral Donne was accepting an unconditional surrender. Leon sent Borachio to open the cellars. Stella, who could hardly remember how to stand, realised she had put on her usual green dress although she couldn't recall how or when she had made herself decent or put up her hair.

"Have some champagne!" Hero said. The wine-cellar-cum-bomb-shelter had been keeping safe six cases of Bollinger, which Leon admitted he couldn't bear to bring upstairs to chill while there was a risk of a blast. They were drinking it warm in the house, Ursule pouring it into a coffee mug and Margaret, laughing, tipping a bottle into Borachio's open mouth. Stella accepted a china cup – how wonderful to have her tea ration superseded by fizz – and, shaking off her fog, returned upstairs to change for a party.

After twenty months of rations, Hero's borrowed dress from the Christmas dance fit her much more easily, although it was still tight around her arms. Stella felt funny, and she didn't think it was just the champagne. She sat very still and then fell back onto the bed. Today may be easy, bubbly blue-sky bliss but tonight – she hated to think of tonight. Her precarious position before the war came rushing back. Paraded in front of dull rich young men, reminded to smile but not too broadly and laugh but not too loudly.

At least Ben will be there, she thought, so I'll have a friend.

The memory of his luminous face on the hill came back to her, and Stella closed her eyes. Oh, he's going to leave, she thought. She reached again for the cup. It's Leon I've got to think about now, she reminded herself. It was all very well being clever during the war, but what a terrible future I've bought by coming here, and it was all only put off for a little while.

She looked over at Hero's bed, at her cousin's pearl-handled hairbrush and white patent leather shoes. Hero will go away, and I'll be trapped here. She'll probably marry Admiral Peter, or the dashing Captain Claude, although he'll have good luck fighting past Leon. I'll be lucky if I can get Lord John, and he's deadly dull even if he is desperately handsome. At least the nights won't be horrible, she thought wildly. Maybe I can gag him.

She suddenly missed the Sorbonne, the tall pillars and the wine caverns. And she remembered: " _I'd like to travel – I've really always wanted to_."

Ben, she thought.

She had one chance, before he went back to Balliol for his degree. Certainly they'd never be invited to the same parties again, unless she really fell from grace. Tonight, she straightened, was it. Freedom, love and autonomy.

Stella went to Hero's mirror and started applying lipstick.

***

Stella greeted Ben awkwardly when she saw him in the ballroom after dinner. Benny Goodman was playing again, and she watched Ben latch and unlatch his watch on his wrist, unusually uncomfortable.

" _Well, did you evah?_ " she said. "Er, are you off back to college?"

"I suppose so," he said. "A degree would be, well, sensible."

"Sensible's never stopped you before," she said. He looked up and half-smiled.

"Champagne?" she said.

"I'll get it."

He left her standing by the gramophone, and Stella picked at the belt on her dress. Even after her care to preserve it, it was coming apart - maybe she'd have a new dress soon. Surely even Leon would pay for a simple wedding dress, to keep her from being too much of an embarrassment to the family.

Ben returned with two glasses and, Stella was relieved to see, smiling like himself again. "It's horrible remembering what you are to these people," he said. "I like them all but suddenly they're looking through me, differently, like they're waking up from a dream and remembering they hate people like us. War really is over, I guess." He drank his glass quickly. "You staying here?"

"I suppose," Stella said. "I haven't got a home to go to except this one. I miss-"

"Your father?" Ben said, as she said, "France. Oh. Oh, of course I do, but - France is still there, I guess."

"I miss a lot of people," Ben said. He looked down at her as the music changed to a waltz. "Come on, let's show them how it's done."

He had always been a smooth dancer, but tonight he felt distant and mechanical. At Christmas he had been fluid and joking, but now he was hardly there with her at all. The music ended and they stood in silence.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" Stella said.

Ben looked at her, started to say something else, and nodded. "I really do," he said hoarsely. She was leading him towards the back of the ballroom when Leon stood up in the front and addressed the gathering.

"It's thanks to your efforts – all of you – we have defeated the enemy that threatened our shores," he said. "But this terrible war is not over yet. The Americans need our help and we are proud to give it to them. Interceptors are needed in Singapore and East Asia, and I'm confident that with the skills of you brave and clever young people, the war could be over in months." 

Ben and Stella looked at each other.

"I'm not asking you to decide tonight," Leon said. "Enjoy your great success. But in the coming days and weeks we will be sending interceptors to our allies in the East - please consider your choices for the cause."

They walked in silence away from the house, and Stella felt an anxious twinge as they passed the path up to the hill. After a few minutes they were on the main road into town, their habitual way to the Leg of Mutton after so many exhausting shifts.

"Drink?" Ben said.

The pub was full of joyfully rowdy townies. After ten minutes of trying to get the landlady's attention, Ben turned around and said, "I've, er, got a bit of something in my room-"

"Let's go," Stell said. She quickly looked over her shoulder to see if they had been noticed, but no one's celebration included watching their coming and going.

Ben's room was a small and warm; aside from the single bed, it held only an oak wardrobe and a tiny bedside table just big enough for the torch resting on it. The floorboards were worn between the bed and the door, and light and noise came up through the cracks from the rowdy bar downstairs. A pair of Ben's trousers was crumpled against the wall, and several books strewn across the floor. Stella spotted a Saint-Exupéry she'd been meaning to read and briefly considered stealing it.

"It's nice," she said, surprised.

"It's no manor house," Ben said wryly.

Stella laughed. "You haven't seen my room there either."

There was no chair, and after a pause Been smoothed the tartan duvet down on the bed and offered her a seat at the foot. He dug out a dented tin mug from his suitcase and a bottle of brandy from the wardrobe, and poured an anxiously generous measure. After handing her the drink with a small bow, he sat at the head of the bed, twisting the stopper of the bottle.

Stella sipped the brandy, then took a longer drink. "This is better than the whisky, at least," she said. Her mouth was dry and her pulse was pounding. She set the mug on the floor.

"Can I – see that book?" she said. She swallowed.

Ben moved closer to her to reach for it, and Stella leaned forward and kissed him.

She didn't dare breathe. After a long surprised second he groaned in the back of his throat and put his arms around her, and they fell back onto the bed. 

Stella hummed, thrilled, as his fingers skimmed her waist; the feel of his hair in her hands was delightful, and she ran her fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck. His long body angled pleasingly against hers, his belt buckle dug into her hip and she could feel the broad muscles of his back through his shirt. Stella prised off her right shoe and heard it fall to the floor with a gentle clump. Ben rolled back and pulled her on top of him, kissing along her face and down her throat. She kicked off her other shoe.

"Please don't leave without me," she whispered into his neck. He laughed into hers, sliding a hand up her back and reaching with the other to pull a pin out of her hair.

"Where am I going?" he asked. 

"Oxford, Cairo, anywhere. This is going to sound mad but I promise it's not, and it's not because of the drink either. I think you're wonderful. I love you, I really mean it, and I want to marry you."

Ben froze.

Stella felt his cheek go hot and pulled away to look at him: he had turned bright red and was staring off at the wall behind her. A long moment passed. Stella sat back and put her face in her hands.

"I'm so sorry," he said. He clumsily tried to replace the pin, and she grabbed it out of his fingers and jabbed it fiercely into her hair. They sat in silence while Stella struggled to breathe.

"...I should walk you home," Ben said.

"Oh, _don't,_ " she said.

"What do you want me to say? I – I'm twenty-one, Beattie, I don't even have a degree, never mind work. What am I going to do with a wife?"

"Fuck off," she enunciated crisply. She laced up her shoes in icy silence while Ben sat with his head in his hand.

"I'm very sorry that I misinterpreted our friendship," she said, and slammed the door behind her.


	6. Epilogue

The war in the Pacific had taken a full two years, but at last the British volunteers were returning home. A telegraph from Admiral Donne requesting the honour of Leon's hospitality had arrived that morning, and the household had spent the afternoon preparing the grand house of Messina for his arrival: the staff cleaning every reception room, Hero carefully choosing the table linen and glassware and Antony, bother him, retiring to the study with a bottle of madeira before anyone could find something for him to do.

In the late afternoon Leon quickly glanced over Stella's perfectly adequate appearance, more out of habit than any real hope for a match any more. She suspected he had mostly given up on her, which was absolutely fine as far as Stella was concerned. Life at Messina may not have been what she'd dreamed of as a girl, but there were certainly worse places to live as a spinster - and worse bargains to have struck.

The car pulled up just before dinner time and out poured four laughing, thumping soldiers - and one still and silent one. Admiral Donne shook hands with Leon and clapped him on the back; Hero turned bright red and looked everywhere but at Claude; and Stella tried not to watch as the long legs and now much more muscular shoulders of Ben Padova emerged from the back seat. Donne was proclaiming diplomatic nonsense and as the gentlemen walked towards the house, Ben made an offhand joke at which no one laughed.

"Oh, do shut up," Stella said, before she could stop herself. "No one's listening and I don't blame them."

Ben turned around and she covered her cold fear of his opinion by sticking her chin out and glaring at him.

"What, my dear Lady Disdain," he said. Through the dry sarcasm she heard, or fancied she heard, relief under his voice when he asked: "Are you yet living?"

**Author's Note:**

> Credits, ie Which Parts I Ripped Off!
> 
> Messina House is of course based on the British WWII codebreaking HQ at Bletchley Park, although much smaller in scale and with no true geniuses such as Turing (who I am delighted to note has received a royal pardon this week); it's lucky the Germans in my story are using a much, much simpler version of the Enigma machine, because Stella and Ben could never have cracked the real one. 
> 
>  
> 
> Stella is very very roughly based on Mavis Lever (later Batey) and Ben on Keith Batey, but their personalities and circumstances are completely drawn from the play. Leon and Antony are based on Alastair Denniston and Dilly Knox (with bits of the two historical figures divvied up between the two fictional ones); Peter Donne is like Winston Churchill if Churchill were younger and really hot. 
> 
> The thing with "Heil Hitler" actually happened! I cribbed most of the code parts from "The Secret Life of Bletchley Park" by Sinclair McKay and information from the Park itself, and recommend both of them. 
> 
> The timeline is definitely not that of WWII, but based on what we hear has been going on in Much Ado before the action of play. When history and the play have conflicted I have gone with the play. 
> 
> I stole most of the ideas about Beatrice and Benedick's history from the 2007 National Theatre production starring Zoe Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale, and specifically director Nicolas Hytner's interview about the production in the RSC edition of Much Ado. And of course I stole "everyone drinks basically all the time" from the 2012 Joss Whedon film, although - wouldn't you?


End file.
